The Oberkommando West's Obersoldaten unit is the target of other unit's dialogue calling them fanatics, wear the Waffen-SS Erbsenmuster "pea-dot" camouflage pattern, and the words "Waffen" and "Honor Guard" appear in places relating them in the game's code; implying the Obersoldaten were based on some sort of elite Waffen-SS formation such as the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler before they were simply given a more generic name (that basically means "senior soldiers", without much actual use of such a term)

Broken Base: The British in Tales of Valor. 'Roo rushes. Don't dare mention if they are overpowe.red on the Relic forums, because you will learn what it's like to be on the receiving end of a Firestorm barrage.

The second game's... skewed ideas about how faction balancing should work. There was a string of patches where Soviet vehicles were vastly underpowered compared to German ones. It's gotten much better, and this includes the newly added American and Oberkommando West factions.

Larger 3v3 and 4v4 game-modes versus the smaller ones. Players of the latter are likely to say the former are giant clusterfucks which completely devolve the game's strategy and flow and correspondingly are impossible to balance - it's not unlikely players' very different experiences of certain units stems from the game mode they frequent.

From Opposing Fronts, there's even more. For the British Commonwealth, Royal Commandos is a heroic piece which evokes images of a crack team of British elites on a desperate mission behind German lines. For Axis players, there's the Panzer Elite's Dusk of the Fatherland, a theme which epitomises Germany's bitter struggle for survival later in the war.

2 also has some amazing music as well, special mentions must be made to its Main Theme, which is just gorgeous.

Game Breaker: The old Tiger Ace in 2 didn't have an upfront cost, but completely stopped all income gained for the rest of the game. It turned out this still didn't counteract the power of having a Tiger with double health and damage, causing many specifics of the unit to be changed - most notably, it instead penalized manpower and fuel income while active and became a Tiger with full normal veterancy benefits off the bat as well as some bonus sight range.

Soviet Scout Sniper squads used to be able to garrison into M3A1 Scout Cars. With a bit of micromanagement this would allow the Snipers to work their magic against infantry while keeping far away from any potential Wehrmacht attackers for a while since the vehicles needed to catch the Scout Car would take a fair bit more time to get and just about anything on foot would have no chance of catching it, it was basically free map-control and enemy losses for sufficiently skilled players

Obersoldaten used to come with their LMG34 for free, and in general their combat effectiveness was once at a state commonly derogatorily likened by players to that of action heroes or Terminators.

Volksgrenadiers' veterancy bonuses used to include a lot of received accuracy reductions. With their Panzerschreck upgrade that used upon vehicles let them gain veterancy much faster, it was a frequent complaint Volksgrenadiers with Panzerschrecks could quickly become only slightly less than bulletproof as they ran past Allied infantry to shoot their Panzerschrecks at Allied tanks. Said Obersoldaten had no trouble taking care of those Allied infantry anyway.

B4 artillery pieces used to get a damage bonus from veterancy, and an ability (For Mother Russia) with the commander that can build them could be used which would also increase their damage. Their Direct Fire ability, used to shoot at vehicles, could literally One-Hit Kill numerous late-game tanks if it hit in combination with the aforementioned damage bonuses.

2's infantry gameplay's speed was dramatically changed on March 25th, 2014. Unfortunately, in that same update, the G43 upgrade ended up just more or less being a completely broken upgrade with no obvious weaknesses and made Grenadiers upgraded with them largely unmatched by any other infantry...and could be combined with an LMG42 with sufficient munitions to completely crush Soviet infantry's hopes and dreams. The G43s' long-range effectiveness was reduced and the G43 and LMG42 upgrades became mutually exclusive.

The Soviet Industry commander on release reduced the time it took for tier buildings to be made and increased fuel gained at the cost of manpower immediately. While the drawback made losses punishing for its players, the bonuses could allow them to buy tanks long before Wehrmacht opponents could expect to get sufficient AT tools and snowball the game from there - the reduced tier building time was removed, and the bonus fuel at the cost of manpower had a heightened command point requirement to fix the problem.

For Allied players, Puma armored cars. The bastards are damned fast, virtually immune to small arms, and will kite your anti-tank infantry from beyond effective retaliation range with their 20mm cannon—and if you send M8 Greyhounds (the accepted counter) against them, they have the nasty tendency to pop in a 50mm gun to serve as tank destroyers on the cheap. The saving grace is that players who rush for a fast Puma generally can't get heavier tanks out very quickly; it also usually means that they've neglected their Tier-II units, particularly the heavy infantry and anti-tank guns.

Anti-tank guns themselves count for anyone who tries a tank rush: it is incredibly frustrating to watch your expensive tanks get blasted apart at range by a cheap little 57mm/Pak 38. This is fully intentional, by the way: tanks need infantry to back them up and to clear AT nests. German players relying on either heavy tanks or a lot of tanks are especially crippled by AT guns, as they tend to not have much, if any, infantry due to how expensive their tanks are.

Do you like tanks? Well, U.S. Rangers don't, and they're here to crush the hopes, dreams and fun of German players. What makes them so dangerous compared to Airborne is that they don't have to pay for their bazookas; instead, they come with the unit. They're also ridiculously cost-effective, and are capable of tearing through most infantry at close range if you upgrade them with SMGs.

Mines are, of course, invisible to your troops and require a minesweeper to detect and remove, which is pretty annoying as it is and likely to quickly induce paranoia. But it is when your enemy manages to place them with a machine-gun nest covering them in a chokepoint that you'll be really irritated by them.

Hilarious in Hindsight: 2 saw the PTRS anti-tank rifle weapon be improved in a patch by dramatically increasing its accuracy, making it be usable against infantry. Some players complained about the new effectiveness, saying the weapon now allowed its users to quickly "snipe" infantry models early in infantry combat, reducing squads' DPS fast and snowballing the combat. A few months later, a British Forces expansion preview showed that it would include a dedicated sniper unit using a Boys anti-tank rifle...

Scrappy Mechanic: The player's troops can be stupid when it comes to enemy vehicles, with a tendency to run up to the enemy vehicle and get themselves killed. Even if a soldier so much as touches the enemy tank there's a good chance they'll instantly be killed. Yes, this can include running into the side of a stationary vehicle. This can wipe out 4 or 5 men from a single squad in under a second. Worse yet, this seems to be highly inconsistent - at times, the men decide they like living and jump out of the way of enemy vehicles rolling by, other times they get effortlessly run over.

Sequel Difficulty Spike: The first few moments of singleplayer campaign. In the first game you lead the American's assault into Europe as the game gradually introduce new mechanics and units to you. In CoH 2 however you're starting with underprepared Soviet army that was fighting defensive battle against the full brunt of German forces, with a few dozen of infantry at your disposal (and a anti-tank gun or two if you're lucky) to save yourself from hordes of enemy armored vehicles all the while trying to complete objectives all over the map... While this is nothing new to most RTS players, those who are not used to the genre are in for nasty surprises. Even Isakovich complained in-game that things Soviet Command made them do is nigh-impossible.

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